He took another sip of coffee. “You’ve got a lovesick glow about you.”
“I wouldn’t say lovesick.”
He hummed under his breath. “We’ll see.”
“Felix is just—he’s a really sweet guy. It’s more of an insta-crush.”
“Tomato,tomato.”
I laughed and waved my hands. “All right, all right. Enough. I’m fair skinned and you’re making me blotchy.”
The door opened and one of the school’s custodial workers wandered in. He held up a doorknob package and a handful of tools. “Don’t mind me—just breaking into your office, sir.”
“Ah, sure, okay,” I called.
Stephen watched over his shoulder briefly as the grizzled man got down on one knee in front of my locked office and started using a power tool to unscrew the current doorknob. He looked back at me. “Are we on for yearbook duty tonight?”
The power-drilling increased in noise and my left eyelid twitched. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Very good. You bring yourself,” he said, walking to the door. “I’ll bring the Chinese takeout, and we can pore over that inevitable clusterfuck together.”
BAND COULDhave gone better.
It began with an argument—my former first-chair clarinetist having a meltdown in the hallway, screaming and cursing me out for moving her. I’m not keen on students swearing to my face, but I was also painfully aware of the pressure some seniors were under, and this one seemed wound especially tight. I let her rant and rave until she had no fight left, then asked if she wanted to sit class out. She agreed. I left her in the hall, collected her belongings, and sent her to the library to cool down.
And the janitor was still screwing around with my now knobless office door, despite class having already started. He ignored my insistence that power drills were not part of any section in the band, and said he couldn’t fix the door at any other time of day. So what was already a colorful mess of off-pitch, messy tempo music was further disrupted by thewhirs of tools grating against metal.
Insult to injury was the entire percussion section. I was pretty certain they were all hungover. I mean, honestly. I’m well aware teenagers are teenagers and can be plain stupid—I have firsthand experience there—but partying on aTuesday?
I motioned for the band to stop playing and looked toward the back. “How you guys doing?” I asked.
Whir, tck, tck tck!
For the love of God, it’s only a fucking doorknob! How long does it take to install?
“Fine,” one boy stated, setting his drumsticks down on the snare drum.
“You sure? Because you’ve been consistently a measure behind the rest of the band.”
Ping!The sound of one piece of the doorknob hitting the linoleum echoed through the room.
“Sorry,” one of the girls murmured.
Ping!Followed by the other half.
“We can do this without you,” I suggested dryly. “Since you all seem to be… under the weather.”
A few snickers came from the woodwind section.
“No?” I asked when they all remained silent.
“We’ll keep up,” the first boy answered.
“Appreciate that,” I replied. I picked up the baton again and raised my hands.
Cher started singing “I Walk Alone” from my back pocket.
I set the baton down as students laughed.
